Meta

Newsletter Subscription

A group of pain experts and health officials are asking the Food and Drug Administration to provide clearer guidance to physicians on how to use extended-release painkillers and to limit claims pharmaceutical companies can make about the high-dosage medications. If approved, drug companies would be blocked from marketing their powerful painkillers as remedies for more common aches and pains…An "increasing body of medical literature suggests that long-term use of opioids may be neither safe nor effective for many patients," according to the citizen's petition, which was signed by more than three dozen leading pain-addiction experts and prominent health officials from the New York City department of health, Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic.